Watching This Week #119

Happy regular Monday to everyone in Quebec, the Yukon, and most of Newfoundland and Labrador, and happy long weekend to pretty much everyone else. Welcome to the August 7, 2023, edition of Watching This Week, the weekly newsletter from Where Can I Watch – covering the latest news on where TV shows and movies will be available in Canada.

This is another mostly abbreviated edition focused on updated listings for the coming week. However, we'll use this opportunity to share a few recent mailbag questions and answers about titles like Smartless on the Road, Have You Got It Yet?, Harley Quinn, and more.

What's new this week – August 7–13

Compiled from our monthly listings and/or any subsequent updates we've come across. We strive for accuracy but schedules may change without notice. Some series/seasons may have weekly rollouts; we won't list new episodes every week (though we may note significant episodes such as series finales). *An asterisk denotes programming added in past weeks that we've learned about (or has been rescheduled) since our last newsletter.

• Netflix: Gabby's Dollhouse (season 8 – Monday); Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City (2021 film – Tuesday); The Seven Deadly Sins: Grudge of Edinburgh Part 2 (anime film – Tuesday); Untold: Johnny Football (Tuesday); Zombieverse (Korean reality series – Tuesday); Ladies First: A Story of Women in Hip-Hop (docuseries – Wednesday); The Lost City (2022 film – Thursday); The Matrix Resurrections (2021 film – Thursday); Mech Cadets (animated series – Thursday); Painkiller (opioid crisis limited series – Thursday); Heart of Stone (spy thriller – Friday);
• Disney+: Only Murders in the Building (season 3 – Tuesday); High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (final season – Wednesday); Moving (Korean fantasy series – Wednesdays); A Town Without Seasons (Japanese series – Wednesday); Jagged Mind (Hulu horror film – Friday); six newly-restored Disney shorts from 1931–43 (Friday)
• Crave: Fantastic Friends (season 2 – Wednesday); Alice, Darling (2022 thriller film – Friday); Billions (final season – Fridays); Farming for Love (season 1 of the CTV series – Friday); She Said (2022 #MeToo dramatization – Friday); Summering (2022 drama film – Friday); Telemarketers (HBO docuseries – Sundays);
• Prime Video: The Killing Vote (Korean thriller series – Thursdays); Red, White & Royal Blue (romantic film – Friday); The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023 film – Friday);
• CBC Gem: Super Agent Jon Le Bon (season 5 – Monday); The Colour of Ink (2022 doc – Wednesday); video of Q interview with Paul Simon (Friday); You & Me (British miniseries – Friday)
• Paramount+ (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): Love in Taipei (YA romantic film – Thursday); Twisted Metal (Peacock video game adaptation – Thursday);  Paint (2023 comedy film – Friday)
• Apple TV+: Strange Planet (animated series – Wednesdays)
• BritBox (also available as a channel on Prime Video and Apple TV): Murder Investigation Team (season 1 – Tuesday)
• CTV: The Challenge: USA (season 2 – premieres Thursday; Sundays thereafter)

Mailbag

Here's some of the reader questions we've received recently by email (hello@wherecaniwatch.ca). We welcome questions of general interest, and publish a few of them (and our answers) from time to time; messages may be edited for brevity and clarity.

John: Max's SmartLess on the Road [the filmed version of the comedy podcast with Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes] – any word when this drops on Crave?

WCIW: The series was originally ordered by Discovery+ in 2021 (prior to the WB-Discovery merger taking effect), so if there are any Max Original series being reserved for Discovery+ in Canada, that is probably one of them. There are a couple of other Max series that had a similar path like What Am I Eating? with Zooey Deschanel.

But of course neither of those shows has shown up on Discovery+ Canada yet either, so maybe something still needs to be worked out – hopefully sooner rather than later.

Dylan: Do you happen to know why Bell-owned Crave has the streaming rights to the first two seasons of [Child's Play spinoff] Chucky even though it airs on Corus-owned Showcase?

WCIW: It’s not obvious at first glance, but if you click the languages button on Crave's listing for the series, you’ll see that Crave only offers Chucky in French. It looks like Bell’s Super Écran bought equivalent linear rights in French to what Showcase has in English.

Although a bit rarer in the streaming era, it’s not uncommon for English- and French-language rights for different programs to be sold separately in Canada.
On Crave specifically, there are several programs or movies that only are available in one language or the other, not both. One more example is the Paw Patrol movie which is only available in French on Crave (and on Paramount+ in English). Conversely there are some series only available in English and not French, like My Brilliant Friend which, despite being nominally an HBO original series, was sold separately in Canada to Crave in English and Club Illico in French.

As for English-language streaming rights, although Chucky was produced by NBCUniversal, it looks like it's under a different agreement from programs premiering on Peacock, so Corus evidently didn't pay for long-term streaming rights – perhaps it'll show up somewhere else eventually.

Michael: I would be grateful if you could look into when/where/whether [music documentary] Have You Got It Yet? The Story of Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd will be available on any Canadian streaming platform.

WCIW: At the moment it looks like Have You Got It Yet? is making the rounds of the rep cinema circuit, so it may be a while before it hits a streaming service.

Since the film in question is produced by Mercury Studios – the film division of Universal Music Group (UMG), which we should note has been a separate entity from Universal Pictures for several years now – it’s not entirely clear how the streaming rights will line up.

Our recollection is that Crave has carried some UMG-produced films in the past (the head of Bell Media at the time having previously worked for UMG), but we're not sure if that’s an ongoing relationship or was just a series of one-off deals. At this point it’s just as likely that it’ll land on a service like Prime Video or Netflix, but either way we'd expect it’ll land somewhere within the next year.

Jami: I've scoured previous newsletters but apologies if I missed it, any information on if we'll be able to watch [DC adult animated series] Harley Quinn season 4 that premiered July 27 on Max? Netflix Canada recently added seasons 1 and 2, previously season 3 was on Prime through StackTV/Adult Swim but it's gone from there as well.

WCIW: Season 4 premiered on Adult Swim Canada on Sunday, July 30 (and should continue subsequent Sunday nights); it’s available to stream both through the Global TV website/app and on StackTV (though it looks like there is an issue with the first episode of the season on the latter).

As for season 3, it’s possible Netflix hasn’t decided whether to pick up later seasons yet, but it's likely the kind of arrangement where it’ll land there after the current season finishes. A few other series have been handled similarly when it comes to splitting streaming rights. If you want to watch it in the meantime, you’d need to find it via digital purchases.

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We'll see you again next week.